After a bit of a slog up to the top of a tasty DS ridge in Shropshire, George Pilkington, Adam Richardson and I were greeted by the sight of Mike Evans smoothly carving his Vector III through some aeros in the light thermic lift.
Adam and George bolted the wings on their D40’s in short order and had them whizzing round the back within 5 minutes of arriving. The conditions weren’t there for big speeds – only just enough for continuous DS - but as usual this little model didn’t disappoint and provided plenty of entertainment.
Soon enough the MiniVec was launched off too and I quickly had the confidence to start trying to remember my (limited!) aerobatic repertoire. Mike and Adam joined in with their big Vectors and with George on the camera, some fun was had trying to get all three Vectors in the same shot at the same time – the models ended up flying around on crow for about 10 minutes!
After some more larking about I landed the MiniVec as, in keeping with other Hammond designs, this one seems to be quite happy with less throw than you would expect, so she was rated down a bit on the ailerons, and duly launched off again. With a total of about 2 hours continuous flying time, it was pretty clear that there was plenty of fun on offer from the Mini. Meanwhile Mike and Adam were trying to loop around each other’s Vectors a bit further down the slope – sounds like a mid-air waiting to happen, but in the end they just had a lot of fun and no tears thankfully!
No Sloperacer test flight is complete without a bit of DS to test the strength of the model, so I sent the MiniVec down the back and after a bit of getting used to how hot the throws feel on an aerobatic model going faster than it was designed for, the light conditions pushed the MiniVec over the ton to 101mph – and not a mm of flex anywhere – passed that test then! It’s always interesting landing a model on a DS ridge, but the MiniVec has lovely handling on crow, so thankfully that proved to be an anticlimax. All in all this model does everything you would expect it to, with excellent energy retention, accuracy and tracking. It has lots of power from both controls at the back end too, so if you’re into violent flicks and tumbles, then she’ll serve them up no bother. All in all, what’s not to like? Great looks, plenty strong, doesn’t need masses of wind, flies beautifully on the front or the back, and is a peach to land.
By now the DS was starting to look a little bit more tasty so Adam got his Erwin DSS up. That seemed to be going round pretty well, so I decided to get my Strega F3F up for some acro DS – I’m really enjoying this kind of flying at the moment with an F3F model – they are a LOT of fun in light DS! Now I’m not one to brag (much) but I’ll just say this – Erwin DSS 102mph, Strega 107mph – sorry Adam! I don’t beat him at much so when I do, I gotta get the news out!
Now it’s not like we’d had a boring day up until this point, but George decided that we all needed a wake up and when we landed we found him putting his Dynamic 80 together in the pits. Still blowing only between 10 and 15mph, this was a close call decision, but George isn’t one to shy away from doing something daft. So off she went! That DS wing section always surprises us with how well it soars off in light conditions, so George got a little bit of height on and started carving her round. Admittedly these aren’t the conditions that D80 was designed for, but she got going pretty nicely nonetheless and took the fastest speed of the day with 112mph – hey I know it’s not fast, but when you’ve pulled that out of not a lot of wind, it’s a satisfying feeling!
Still not satisfied that he had entertained us enough, George then demonstrated that the conditions were dropping off by treating us to a couple of D80 cartwheels across the top of the slope. Neither George nor the D80 were in the least deterred by this, and she was launched off again, sent round the back, where again the conditions had just dropped off too much and George once again demonstrated how to use the wingtips, nose, tailfin and elevator as landing gear in a cartwheel that Louis Spence would have been proud of. We were all a little worried about a D80 getting two arrivals like this, but fair play to the model – it had a tiny crack in the top fuselage seam, and that’s it – since fixed with cyano to no detriment at all. Thumbs up Joe Manor!
Thanks to George for getting some shots of the MiniVec and the Strega whilst I was flying – here’s a few pics to browse through…
How about this for summer, the new mini Wizard 1.2m span.
Light weight with aileron and elevator control (elevator servo even comes fitted) for those light summer thermals on the slope. But this little beautie comes with ballast and a 100mph capability so you won't have to put it away when the wind picks up.
This little Wiz will be on a slope very very soon!
Yep, they've flown and are proving to be in the wizard mold of flying quality.
The ballast carrying gives it a great wind and speed range. Coming with a servo already mounted in the fuselage and fitted to the tail, the mini wizard only needs wing servos fitting.
Thought I would take a few pics of the pimpin' new Vector III schemes. All colours in stock now - click the full screen icon on the slideshow for the full effect!
Zim
PS This scheme is available on the MiniVec as well, but it must be pre-ordered - drop us a line for more details. Stock MiniVecs will come in the RCRCM scheme
Just back from one road trip and there's Lift ticket to Norway on the doorstep!
Should have slept but there was a DVD to watch! You might expect me to say this but it's great! From the best locations to fly I've ever seen to some amazing shots and flying. I can remember being so inspired to get out and rip the slopes up after watching the original Lift Ticket - the second one gives you the feeling you get after those perfect summer days flying.
Yes it looks good in the pictures. But they just can't convey how beautiful this model is. I honestly can't even begin to describe it well enough to do it justice - it is absolutely gorgeous!
Lots of thanks to RCRCM to getting this one done for me in our new Sloperacer scheme - it's already with Adam Richardson getting built ready for the weekend.
Notable things about the model - it is STRONG! The joiner is seriously beefy, and there is no discernable flex in anything at all. The construction is beautifully done - all of the internal joints inside the wing are tidy and well matched and all the panel weights are within a gram of each other side to side. The all moving tail is butter smooth and has absolutely no slop once assembled - quite unusual as one expects a little lateral movement in any all moving tail set-up, so thumbs up there. And the paintwork from RCRCM just seems to get better and better...
And now for the fun stuff - ballast!!! This model takes ballast in the wing, with some rather cute little tubes already installed right on the CG. But it also comes with a 20mm ballast tube for the fuselage. After some headscratching on the best way to use this, we decided to cut it down and use it to carry 5 x 34mm brass slugs. The beauty about using this arguably oversized ballast tube in the fuse is that it actually bridges the width of the fuse at the rear and at the front of the wingseat, effectively acting like two formers, but considerably easier to install!
Servo-wise - again - some nice surprises here - my favourite little digital, the Savox 0255MG fits everywhere an absolute treat! So it couldn't be simpler - 6 of these gets you sorted for £100 on the servo front.
But for now, enjoy these hastily taken pics from yesterday. And fingers crossed for some nice conditions this weekend for a maiden!
It’s been 2 years since my last visit to Chris van Schoor in County Kerry, Southern Ireland and many fond memories of that trip are still well placed in my mind. The ability to combine a one day business trip to Dublin and a detour to Chris was just icing on the cake.
However nobody was aware of the sleeping giant in Iceland and when Eyjafjallajokull erupted and chucked shed loads of ash into the atmosphere then travel chaos ensued - how was I going to get to Dublin? Simple - I was booked on the Fastcat ferry - how else do you get 12 gliders over to Ireland of which 3 of them were 4 metres?
Having had some unexpected problems on the Friday at our Dublin office I didn’t actually get on the road until 7pm and then there was the 3 ½ hr drive ahead not helped by the usual Friday rush to escape the city. But despite the best efforts of the Irish motoring public try to either blind me with their headlights or just dawdle along at 40mph I arrived at my destination at about 10.45.
Chris and Lisa were exactly the same as last time I met them and it wasn’t many seconds (literally) that I’d got my first Guinness in my hand. After the customary greetings and conversation things soon got down to what lay ahead for the next 4 days. The weather although nice and sunny (what, no rain - that’s a first!) but there wasn’t much prospect of any wind - the F3F lads back home could already be heard muttering about transport costs to the first event and how could they make an early warning call to cancel.
In the intervening 2 years Chris has been a busy lad exploring all parts of County Kerry - it does help being a local planner as your job requires you to go out and about to inspect various bits of the county (model at the ready as well) . His searches had not been in vain and he told me of a bowl about 30 minutes away that he wanted to try and would suit the north easterlies we were expecting. The distances travelled on this trip were significantly less than 2 years ago when we would travel up to 2 hours away to get a good breeze off the sea.
So day one was to be at Caher Conree - an ancient hill fort with sheer drops on three sides. To get to the ruins it was a 2 hour walk which looked lovely but I hadn’t brought any oxygen with me so that was out of the question. We settled for flying at roughly a midpoint up from sea level at about 900’ up and were planning to take a picture of Chris launching from the car (from the sun roof) but the flying was so good we never did get round to taking it . On the last trip I was blown away by some of the sites we travelled to but this was something else again, there was an unobstructed valley for about 3 miles out to the shoreline and this just funnelled all the available breeze straight onto the slope face. I had told Chris before I left home that he really wanted a nice big 4 metre sport model and so had packed a SPARE Alpina for him! He loved it as I knew he would in the 5 to 10 mph winds we had, the big wings loved it and huge stall turns (or are they hammerheads?) and massive loops were the order of the day.
We had also taken a Typhoon, Miraj and Volcano with us but no more as it was the first day on a newish slope with a light forecast. So after a nice leisurely 5 hours of flying we called it a day at about 7pm and made our way back to the house. As soon as we got back Lisa wanted to know what time we wanted to eat, followed straight away with another Guinness - or was it Budweiser this time - so many days so many cans! Dinner arrived and is quite possibly the only time I have asked for a steak to be medium\well and it was spot on. Whilst I’m writing this I’m trying to reconcile in my head which was the best - the day’s flying or the steak ? ...steak wins.
Day 2 arrives and we seem to have a pattern developing here. 9ish very "ish" for breakfast followed by 3 hours of chatting on RCMF, fettling planes and generally messing about , including Chris showing me how you can fly electric from his front lawn. This was technically correct but landings were a bit tricky over the fence/hedge and round the trees, but Chris confidently showed me the ropes with his much battered (now I know why) Stryker. The Stryker whizzed about much as you would expect any brushless wing to with some nice low quick passes thrown in.
Landing involved flying out over a field, coming in over the fence and dropping down onto the lawn - in theory! In practice this involved Chris power diving down from height over the field, inside the fence and then levelling off on the lawn (except) if you time it wrong and hit the upslope of the not yet full pond, you then get the perfect Harrier ski jump to vault your now very slow Stryker over the drive and into the flower beds - cue hilarity all round!
The forecast for day 2 was pretty much the same as day 1 maybe a little more breeze. By the time we were ready to get the car loaded the F3Fers had already pretty much cancelled over in Wales. So we were off to Caher Conree again but this time prepared for more wind. Chris’s pride and joy at the moment is a lovely Reichard 4mtr Fox which up to this point was unflown so that was first in the car followed by the Alpinas, my Sting, the Miraj, a Vector III, a Voltij, and my M60 and Reaper for good measure. Suffice to say the lift once again was awesome and it wasn’t too long before the Fox was out and assembled on the grass awaiting its maiden voyage.
And what a maiden it was, within the first minute the plane was looping and yes it was intentional and Chris had a smile like the Cheshire cat. I had previously shown him a video of a friend’s Fox doing inverted spins so naturally enough Chris threw his into one… I was amazed and almost horrified but of course it all went as planned and after about 15 minutes my heart rate was back to normal. This Fox is very good value for money as for less than £500 you get a 3.75mtr scale model with a glass fuz and foam cored balsa/glass wings all painted and covered which although in scalie terms is quite light actually carries a lot of momentum through manoeuvres so you have the best of both worlds.
Not to be out done I had secreted away my Wizard DSXtreme into the car and weighing a healthy 4.5kg on a span of just 2.5mtr it needs a bit of a blow to get going, it was nothing to Caher Conree in possibly 18-19mph at the very most it may not have floated out of my hands but certainly had no difficulty gaining height with a bit of thermal flap. Chris was charged with taking photos but with my crap memory forgetting to turn the shutter speed up from 1\120th and the speed of the Wiz most of the photos came out a bit blurred. The flying was great but after 10 minutes of trying to eat up the whole of the Irish airspace I decided that enough was enough and went to land , now 15mph mega lift is ok but 15mph headwind with a heavy model and no matter how much crow you’ve got its coming in quick! All ended well though.
At this point Chris was thinking of flying the Voltij and so it was all ready to go when an MPV pulled up by us and in best broad merkin a voice asked “you gonna fly that thang?” to which Chris replied in the affirmative. Well the whooping and the hollering was truly splendid as the VJ speared out and did 3 consecutive rolls followed by a big loop , hang on that loops going a long way back and where’s all the airspeed gone? Oh dear - VJ sort of half spins half flops into the ditch beside the road with no damage at all. Our colonial cousins at this point all look and as one all say “its all good” and dive back into their car to escape any potential further injury.
The day finished off with me flying the Reaper and the M60 full of lead backwards and forwards on what must be a 1 mile course – honestly, a mile! I’ve not flown the M60 anywhere else where I could leave it to just fly in a straight line for what seemed like 30 seconds or more without so much as a tickle on the sticks. And so ended day 2…
Fortunately for us and unfortunately for all the others back home day 3 was pretty much a repeat of day 1 with lots of sun and 5 to 10mph winds - such hardship! The local TV and radio was full of the Icelandic dust cloud story as this seemed to be centred over Ireland and was causing travel chaos, so we decided to take precautions just in case it developed any further and you can see that we survived perfectly well in the accompanying photos. Chris had thought of getting his NBC suit out from his National Service in South Africa but decided not to as the thought of poaching the crown jewels didn’t really appeal.
Day 4 was to be spectacular as the wind had moved round to a more north easterly flow from the previous days and Chris had a new slope to try which he had only previously looked at but not flown. Annascaul is higher up than Caher Conree and does involve some walking (about 70 metres) and is located on a peat bog. Can someone more able than me please explain how you can have a bog on the top of a 1500’ mountain and I do mean on the top! It’s the most weird sensation walking on 6 feet of water logged compost and at anytime be able sink a foot into it. As the forecast was for 5mph then we didn’t take much heavy weight tackle with us - what a mistake to make!
I can now see why Chris finds it a little more difficult to fly on my home inland slopes. On his slopes back on the stick means up and forward means down and that’s it - more akin to power flying. He had his Miraj doing proper Dakinesque 200’ compression loops for a good 4 or 5 minutes with no effort what so ever, again not to be outdone I had a go with the M60 fully loaded and could have carried on until the light went. In the end 4 days of solid flying had taken its toll and we were all flown out after 3 or 4 hours and retired back to a local hostelry for some liquid refreshments and some equally wonderful seafood.
What can I say about the ring of Kerry …..? You’ve got to “fly it before you die” Fabulous place to go - great people and scenery to die for. Must go back before the end of summer.
Thanks Chris and Lisa
Andy
Thanks to Andy for the superb article, and to Andy and Chris for the pictures!
Yes, Sloperacer has been affected by the ruddy volcano! To all those waiting on Lift ticket to Norway and the RCRCM shipment coming, we apologise for keeping you waiting, but unfortunately there's not a lot we can do about it. At this point the lift tickets are now under way and the rcrcm Package is sitting in the Beijing hub (as it has been for a while now) waiting for flights into UK airspace to be cleared. We're hoping that the Southerly coming on later this week will result in our airspace getting cleared out somewhat and therefore our RCRCM shipment arriving. What I can promise you is that I will work my socks off to get through the models through the QC procedure as quickly as possible once it does arrive so that all those waiting on their models wait as little time as possible!
After a bit of a slog up to the top of a tasty DS ridge in Shropshire, George Pilkington, Adam Richardson and I were greeted by the sight of Mike Evans smoothly carving his Vector III through some aeros in the light thermic lift.
No Sloperacer test flight is complete without a bit of DS to test the strength of the model, so I sent the MiniVec down the back and after a bit of getting used to how hot the throws feel on an aerobatic model going faster than it was designed for, the light conditions pushed the MiniVec over the ton to 101mph – and not a mm of flex anywhere – passed that test then! It’s always interesting landing a model on a DS ridge, but the MiniVec has lovely handling on crow, so thankfully that proved to be an anticlimax. All in all this model does everything you would expect it to, with excellent energy retention, accuracy and tracking. It has lots of power from both controls at the back end too, so if you’re into violent flicks and tumbles, then she’ll serve them up no bother. All in all, what’s not to like? Great looks, plenty strong, doesn’t need masses of wind, flies beautifully on the front or the back, and is a peach to land.
Now it’s not like we’d had a boring day up until this point, but George decided that we all needed a wake up and when we landed we found him putting his Dynamic 80 together in the pits. Still blowing only between 10 and 15mph, this was a close call decision, but George isn’t one to shy away from doing something daft. So off she went! That DS wing section always surprises us with how well it soars off in light conditions, so George got a little bit of height on and started carving her round. Admittedly these aren’t the conditions that D80 was designed for, but she got going pretty nicely nonetheless and took the fastest speed of the day with 112mph – hey I know it’s not fast, but when you’ve pulled that out of not a lot of wind, it’s a satisfying feeling!
